Turnover-prone. No mid-range jumper. Poor ball-handler. Not productive enough. His game has been sliced and diced apart for as long as he can remember.

But the 6-foot-8 forward quietly has gone about silencing his critics with a strong showing for Detroit's summer league team, which included a 26-point effort in Detroit's 96-73 summer league win against the New York Knicks on Wednesday.

The Knicks, led by the 3-point shooting of Nikoloz Tskitishvili (12 points, 4-for-8 from 3-point range), hit back-to-back 3-pointers in the third quarter. Summers responded with a driving left-handed layup, and followed that with a 3-pointer that pushed Detroit's lead to 64-51.

"DaJuan has been what we thought he was, and even more," said Joe Dumars, Detroit's president of basketball operations.

In addition to spending three seasons at Georgetown, Summers also played at LeBron James' summer camps, in which he had to defend the league's reigning MVP.

That experience, Dumars said, gave the Pistons a sense that Summers would come in more prepared to make an immediate impact than the team's other rookies.

Detroit has a 3-1 summer league record, with Summers averaging a team-best 19.5 points per game.

Despite his strong play thus far, Summers still isn't convinced he will make the Pistons' roster.

"I don't think anything is a sure thing," he said. "I thought the first round was a sure thing. I don't believe anything until it's actually concrete. That's just how I approach things."

With that little bit of doubt always there, Summers has made a point of trying to be consistent in all phases of his play.

"You can't have one good game in summer league, three bad ones and then a so-so game," said Summer's agent, Thad Foucher. "He's been very consistent throughout the whole campaign here. And at the end of the day, we'll see what happens."

Summers' numbers at Georgetown weren't all that impressive last season (13.6 points, 4.1 rebounds), in part because Georgetown went away from the uptempo style that Summers thrived in early on in his career. That led to many questions about whether he could handle himself on the perimeter.

Because of those concerns, teams were hesitant to select him in the first round.

"It's unfortunate that people picked his game apart like that without really getting a chance to really see the kid," Foucher said.

Summers still thought he would be a first-round pick. But when the Pistons selected Austin Daye with the No. 15 pick, and the Chicago Bulls followed with Wake Forest's James Johnson at No. 16, Summers started to think that he might slip into the second round.

"Nothing's promised," Summers said. "I learned that from an early age. When things don't go my way, it's not detrimental, it's not life-ending for me. I just keep on grinding, keep working hard."

Pistons assistant Pat Sullivan hasn't been surprised at the all-round game Summers has displayed in summer league.

"Anytime you get a kid out of Georgetown program, those guys know how to play," said Sullivan, who served as the head coach Wednesday. "He's a tough matchup for any 3s (small forwards) or 4s (power forwards) in (summer) league. Obviously, it'll be different come November, but you can see his potential."

So could the Pistons' front office, which had Summers on its short list of players to consider drafting at No. 15, 20 spots ahead of where they selected him.

"To get him at 35 ... we felt really, really good about that," Dumars said.